Chapter 20
Lillian read the letter three times, then folded it carefully and placed it in her writing desk. She did not reply immediately. She did not know what to say.
An aberration.
That was what he called it. The most significant moment of her life, the confession of love, the passionate kiss, the promise to face the future together, and he dismissed it as an aberration. A mistake. A momentary lapse of judgment to be corrected and forgotten.
She had thought she knew him. She had thought she understood the man beneath the mask—the wounded boy hiding in the folly, the lonely duke who did not know how to let anyone close. She had thought that her understanding meant something. That her love meant something.
Perhaps it did not.
Perhaps nothing meant anything at all.